Weekly Writing Challenge

I’ll never forget Valentine’s Day of my freshman year in college. I was a student at Liberty Baptist College (which is now Liberty University) in the town of Lynchburg, VA. This was the private Baptist College founded by the pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church, Jerry Falwell. My grandmother was a distant cousin of the Falwell family and this was the only college I considered. (Thank goodness I was accepted!)

Little did I realize that on the very first day when I arrived on campus the fellow who would eventually become my husband spotted me. He had just come into the lobby of our dorm building after playing basketball with his buddies and saw me with my parents checking in for the first time. He was a sophomore, a year older than I was.

I guess he would say it was “love at first sight” because he began a campaign to win my heart right away. He knew my roommate and persuaded her to introduce us, which she did. I thought he was nice, but I was more focused on my classes and studies than worrying about dating.

During the fall of that year “he” cleverly found ways of putting himself in my path. If I was at a football game, he would happen to be sitting nearby. If I was at a concert, he would cross my path and say hello. When I sat with my friends in chapel, he would be sitting nearby with his friends. After a while seeing him in my peripheral vision became the norm.

Then Valentines Day arrived. As I made my way to my classes that day I started to see little red Cupid cutouts hanging on the walls all along my route. Some of them had little notes on them, such as “Val, be my Valentine” or “Val, be mine!” I started to suspect that I was the target of those messages and knew “he” was the sender because he had signed some of them. It was fun to anticipate what might be in store on my way to the next class.

At the end of the day when I arrived at my dorm building, I spied on the front desk a beautiful bouquet of flowers with my name on them. It was quite an object of attention and as I opened the card I could feel the curious eyes of others watching me as I read it.

The message on the card identified “him” as the instigator of the Cupid messages and invited me out on a date.

Needless to say, I agreed and the rest was history! We dated, got married, and had three children. Last year we celebrated our 35^th wedding anniversary! And it all started with a little ingenuity, persistence, and some red Cupid cutouts.